Since I mentioned the Chubb Small article, thought I'd make sure everyone remembers what effort and accomplisments he made...
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Football player breaks his silence about lonely and trying childhood
By Jacob Messer
Daily Mail sports writer
HUNTINGTON -- Chubb Small was just a seventh grader in Florida when the bottom of his life dropped from under him. He awoke at 7:30 one morning before school to find an unusual object on his pillow -- a handwritten letter from his mother. It was scribbled with pencil on notebook paper.
As he read the words, each one broke his heart and wracked his brain. The message was clearly stated but beyond comprehension. "It said how much she loved me, but she can't stay in Polk County and she knew I wasn't going to go with her," Small recalled. "She just told me she was leaving and going back to Daytona to stay with a friend."
Sitting alone in an empty house, the abandoned child read the letter "probably a hundred times" in three hours, wondering if it was a cruel joke. "I didn't believe it," Small said.
The distance Small has traveled from his life in those days is a miracle. Now he is a senior running back for Marshall University, hearing his name called out over the loudspeaker and experiencing the cheers of thousands of fans. The 5-foot-9, 198-pound running back will play the final game of his college career Saturday.
Coach Mark Snyder describes Small as "a guy that made a way out of no way."
The story of his life is one of the most difficult you will ever hear. It is a subject so sensitive to him that only a few friends and loved ones know all of the details.
Coaches and teammates who have known the Marshall football player for four years know only bits and pieces, some more than others depending on how much he trusts them and how much they mean to him. It is a success story in which Small overcomes obstacles that would have tripped up people with lesser character. He shared some of the most painful periods of his life during a three-hour interview.
He decided to do so to provide inspiration, not to receive adulation. He knows there are boys and girls whose present mirrors his past.
---"I Was Forced To Grow Up"
Small's journey began in Florida, where he was born. A seventh-grader at Stambaugh Middle School in Auburndale, he could not have been happier. Football season had ended and basketball season had started.
Although his single mother had bounced him from home to home and school to school more than a dozen times during his childhood, often leaving him alone to fend for himself for days and weeks at a time, Small betrayed his better judgment and believed she had changed.
The family had a house, complete with running water and working power, necessities to most people but luxuries to them. It was just the two of them, which is the way he liked it.
"It was perfect," Small said.
That all ended the morning he received his mother's letter.
Anger replaced doubt.
"I was just done," he said, "because let's be real: What kind of parent does that? She could have at least woke me up so she could have at least had a talk with me and maybe I could have understood where she was coming from. She didn't have a good enough reason to tell me face-to-face."
The letter had to go.
"I was so mad I couldn't keep it," Small said. "I cut it up and threw it away."
Holding the letter an arm's length from his face and reading it, Small grabbed a chef's knife -- the large kind with a wide blade and sharp point -- and started poking holes in the paper.
"I read it for the last time and it was just that little oomph," he said, scrunching his face and gritting his teeth in an angry expression. "I stuck it in there and from then on I just started cutting it. Then, I threw it away. It was like me saying, 'I don't need you. I can do it myself. I'm a man now.'
He was 13.
"I was forced to grow up after that," said Small, who has four older brothers who did not live at home during his childhood. "I stayed there for a while by myself. After practice, I would go to a friend's house and eat dinner there.
"One day, my middle brother came by the house just to see if we were home and I was there. He asked me where mom was and I told him. Of course, he got mad. He was like, 'Come stay with me.' But he had his own issues. He had a lot of kids -- at least eight at the time.
"I didn't want to be a burden on him. How much better could that be? I stayed with him for just a little bit so I wouldn't be there by myself because eventually the rent would be due and the lights would be cut off."
---Setbacks and opportunity
Difficult times started as early as the fifth or sixth grade for Small.
Around then, Small and his mother had moved to Kissimmee to live with her oldest son. But Small's mother and brother rarely were there.
"I can honestly say that was when I was forced to grow up," he said. "She would stay the night somewhere and then come back for a couple of days. That one night would turn into two or three. Once, it turned into a week. One time, she left and I didn't know when she was coming back."
Only 11 at the time, Small was not exactly Emeril in the kitchen. Even if he were, he did not have the food or the money needed to make meals for himself.
With no other options, he would break into his brother's bedroom and steal from his brother's change jar to scrounge up a couple of dollars to take to the corner store. There, he would buy one of the few items he could prepare -- Hot Pockets.
"I did that for a while," Small said.
One of his food runs started a chain of events that led him first to Hargrave Military Academy and then to Marshall.
A lady inside the store noticed Small. She asked him his name, his age and if he played football. Her husband, she told him, coached a youth team and he would be perfect for it, although he was bigger than the average 11-year-old.
"I was fat until the fourth grade," Small said with a grin.
His given name is Lenford Small. His nickname is a shortened version of "Chubby," which is what a doctor called him when he weighed 11 pounds, 9 ounces at birth.
The lady told Small he needed his parents' permission and a $30 admission fee to play for the Kissimmee Panthers.
"I filled out the papers right there in the store," he said. "But she wanted to talk to my parents about me playing.
"At the time, I was like, 'What am I going to tell her?' I couldn't let her know I was at home by myself because she could have called the Department of Health and Human Services. I didn't want my mom to be put in jail and I didn't want to be taken away. I just told her they weren't home.
"I took the papers home so my mom could fill them out. Luckily, my mom showed up and filled it out, but she didn't have the money to pay the fee. (The coach and his wife) basically paid it for me. They felt sorry for me."
Small was happier than he ever had been.
"Mom started staying home a little more," he said. "I thought everything was getting back on track."
His joy lasted only a couple of months, however, because his mother decided to move again.
"I don't know why I expected anything else," Small said, "but I did."
Small estimates he attended 13 elementary schools and lived in at least four cities -- Auburndale, DeLand, Kissimmee and Lakeland -- before he turned 18. That continued in his teenage years when he attended two middle schools and three high schools.
"I didn't let it get the best of me," Small said. "You only lose when you give up. I never gave up.
"I had plenty of chances to go sell drugs. I had plenty of chances to steal. It was all right there. I have come close to doing it. But I never did. I knew it wasn't for me."
Small remained loyal to his mother, despite the hardships.
"I wanted to please her," he said. "As long as Mom was happy, everything was cool.
"The way she raised me, she always taught me to stay in a child's place. Even the things I did want to know, I never asked her. It was always assumption. Either she wasn't ready to slow down and take care of her responsibility or ...I don't know any other reason."
---
"I Wanted Her Back"
Even as Small struggled to cope with his home life, he excelled on the football field.
Kenny Harrison and Mike Coe, then the coaches at Auburndale High School, talked to Small about playing there.
"I wanted to, but I didn't know how it would work out because I didn't know where I was going to be next," Small said.
Coe said, "You know what? You can come stay with me."
Small concluded he had no other option.
"He gave me hope," Small said.
Then Small's mother came back in the picture. She wanted him to transfer to DeLand High School and live with her.
"She didn't want to take care of me, but she didn't want anyone else to take care of me, either," he said. "She just decided to not let me have any say-so on what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be."
Small was determined to return to Auburndale and eventually prevailed. As with his entire life, nothing was simple. Coe wound up moving to Madison County High School, 225 miles away, and Small did not want to move that far.
Small eventually moved in with his sister-in-law's mother in Lakeland, commuting 20 miles to Auburndale for a while, transferring to powerhouse Lakeland High School and finally returning for his senior season at Auburndale.
The last move also meant reuniting with his mother.
"I wanted her back," Small said. "I wanted it to be just my mom and me again. We talked her into coming back. Her reason (for not returning) was she wasn't able: She couldn't afford this or she couldn't afford that, she wouldn't have time to get back on her feet, she didn't have a job."
Small received help from community members and church leaders.
"They all came up with money. They all came up with food. They all helped find her a job and get us an apartment. This was my mom's chance to actually make her life better. Everything was given to her on a platter. All she had to do was maintain."
Even that was too much to expect, he said.
Small returned from football practice one evening to find an empty and dark apartment. The power had been cut off because his mother had not paid the electric bill.
"And my mom was nowhere to be found," he said.
---
"He Was So Sincere"
Despite it all, Small wound up a Class 4A all-state selection who rushed for about 1,600 yards in his final season and 3,000 yards in his high school career.
He got through with the help of coaches who allowed him to wash and iron his clothes at school and friends like Brian Casey, whose father agreed to let Small stay with them so he could finish his senior year.
"He had it rough," said Casey, a Florida State University graduate who now is a first-year student at the Florida Coastal School of Law.
Casey first played football with Small in the eighth grade.
"His power would get cut off," Casey said. "His water would get cut off. His mom wouldn't be able to support him. He would come over to my house to eat dinner or take a shower."
Small never let it get the best of him.
"Inside, you knew his life was falling apart; outside, he was fine," Casey said. "Anybody who can get through all of that with a smile on their face, you know they're going to succeed in life."
Others helped, too.
A teammate's father was a city commissioner in Auburndale. He told Small to visit the Parks and Recreation Department and talk to Cindy Hummel, who gave him a job manning the concession stand at the city's softball complex.
"I promise I'll work," Small told her.
She asked him why he needed a job.
"I have to buy all of my personals and pay bills because my mother can't take care of me," Small replied.
She was impressed.
"When he came into my office, he was so sincere," she said. "For a young man to say such a thing, I knew it must be bad."
Their meeting was another link in the chain of events that shaped his current path.
"From then on," he said, "she always made sure I was OK."
Small did not realize at first that Cindy's husband was George Hummel, a former high school football coach who taught his ninth-grade computer class.
The Hummels were the best thing that ever happened to Small.
The white couple informally adopted the black teenager and welcomed him into their family, which already included two grown children and grandchildren.
"I don't know how it all happened, but it just did," said Small, who became a full-fledged member of the Hummel family when he started living with them during the winter break after his first semester at Marshall. "They were just there, like the angels that were made just for me."
Small might not have graduated if the Hummels had not asked one of their friends, a former college professor, to tutor him for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which all Sunshine State seniors must pass before they can receive their high school diplomas.
Although major colleges recruited him to play for their football teams, Small could not accept an athletic scholarship because he was unable to pass the ACT college entrance exam. He needed a 17 but repeatedly scored a 16.
Small decided to attend Hargrave Military Academy to prepare himself academically and athletically, but there was an obstacle he had to overcome: a $24,000 price tag.
There was no reason to worry. Not with the Hummels taking care of him. They formed a fundraising committee with school officials and community members. The group collected about $18,000 that summer, but he needed $6,000 more.
Then-Auburndale Principal Ernest Joe, himself a former football player and coach, made sure Small got it. Joe cashed in a favor from Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, whom he had coached at Kathleen High School.
Lewis, whose younger brother, former University of Maryland running back Keon Lattimore, also attended Hargrave, wrote a check for the balance.
"I had all of this negativity in my life to the point where something positive eventually had to happen," Small said. "I thought God had made this my second chance."
Small made the most of it.
He not only passed the ACT and SAT college entrance exams in his only semester at Hargrave, but also earned a 4.0 grade point average.
He also played so well for the Tigers that a recruiting Web site, Rivals.com, ranked him the country's No. 14 prep school player and No. 2 prep school running back.
Small chose Marshall over the University of Toledo and Utah State University after he and the Hummels visited all three schools.
When he told them his decision, they told him their secret: George played football for four years at Marshall and Cindy lived in Huntington for two years. Cindy, a former Kent State student, married George after his sophomore year.
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Small said. "It was just a big coincidence in my life that got me here."
--"I Feel Like I Have Already Succeeded"
Small said college is like paradise to him because he never has to worry about having food, power, water or shelter. All his needs are covered, either by Marshall or the Hummels.
"It's like heaven," said Small, who slept on a couch on his grandmother's carport and kept his clothes in a cardboard box beside it for a couple of weeks during the summer after his high school graduation because there was no room for him inside her home. "I finally got out of hell."
However, there are reminders of his past. He lives alone in a Huntington apartment and prefers to keep his rooms dark.
"Throughout all of my life, that's just the way it has been," said Small, 23. "I have adapted to it so much to the point that that's just the way I am now. That's what I know."
Small did not become a headline-making star for the Thundering Herd, but he believes there is a reason for that.
"Before, all I thought I had was football," said Small, who enters his final game with 254 carries for 1,153 yards and nine touchdowns in 46 games in four years.
"Because I haven't had all of these 100-yard games or 1,000-yard seasons, it made me think about other things that I need to have in my life other than football. I think by not having (that kind of success), it actually steered me to broaden my horizons. The emphasis on education became stronger."
Small will receive his bachelor's degree in sports management and marketing next month. He plans to pursue a master's degree if he does not make it to the National Football League.
"I'll be the first one in my family to graduate from college," said Small, who normally ends each semester with a 2.8 to 3.0 grade point average. "I feel like I have already succeeded.
"I kept getting pushed down when I was younger. I'm pushing up now. I just want to keep pushing up, just to even it all out and make up for lost time."
The only thing that matters more to Small than his academics and athletics is his family, as evidenced by his MySpace page. His profile includes an arrangement of three photos -- one of him with his godfather, one of him with his godmother and one of him with his biological mother. Above it is this title: "No love like family love."
His biological mother lives in Florida, where she battles health conditions, including diabetes. She is disabled and has had a leg amputated.
She receives a phone call from her baby boy every day.
"It's unconditional love," he said. "I can be mad at her because she doesn't make the best decisions, but I can't hold a grudge against her."
---
A family, finally
Ask Small who his parents are and he does not hesitate: George and Cindy Hummel, ages 61 and 60.
"Your parents say they love you and help you get where you are, but it's not always like that," said Small, who does not know his father. "That's how it's supposed to be.
"You can say you love me, but love is spelled H-E-L-P. That's the way I see it. If you love somebody, you want to help them. It's a four-letter word, but it isn't spelled L-O-V-E.
"George and Cindy are my mom and dad. They have made my life so much easier. They helped me to not think so much. I used to always think about how am I going to eat, how am I going to do this, how am I going to do that, where am I going to stay next.
"I was living day-to-day until I met them. Now, when I go home for break, that's where I live. Their home is my home now. They do everything parents should do for their children."
Added George: "He has given as much joy and love to us as we have given to him."
The Hummels were scheduled to travel from Florida to West Virginia today to have Thanksgiving with Small.
"This will be the first time we have spent Thanksgiving away from our biological children," Cindy said. "They don't have a problem with it. They told us we needed to be there for him. They call him their 'brother from another mother.' They love him and accept him as much as we do."
The Hummels also will join Small for Senior Day festivities Saturday before Marshall faces Tulsa at Joan C. Edwards Stadium in Huntington. When he is introduced and honored, they will accompany him.
He would not have it any other way.
"That's my mom and pops right there," he said.
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